Hey Katrinah, here's the world, would you just hold it on your shoulders for a minute?

I want to tell you about my students.
I teach two classes.  One in the morning, and one in the afternoon.
Today, I want to tell you about my morning class.
They are a group of older kids, about nine and ten years old.
Right now they are on their break. Here, they have their summer break in December.
It is their summer break, and every day, they walk to school, which is relatively far from home, to come and take classes from a native English speaking teacher.
I never wanted to go to school on a weekday during the school year.
They want so badly to learn.
It amazes me every day.
These kids learn English from teachers who do not speak English.
The teachers teach out of books that they do not understand.
One of the most common methods of teaching is to write sentences on the black board and just have the kids repeat it over and over and over sometimes for an hour or two straight.
When I first entered the classroom, I was so impressed by how much the kids knew. They can recite anything.
I walk into the class everyday (which is a loose way of speaking, as I teach outside in the mornings because there is no room for my students) and the kids stand up and say in unison, "good morning blessed teacher. How are you?" If I fail to say "fine, how are you?", then they wait about thirty seconds and say "we are fine"
They have been taught to be almost robotic.
The other day, I asked them to write a story for me. To make one up.
I thought they would be excited, but they were confused.
"are you wanting us to copy it from the board?"
"no, make it up on your own"
"copy from the book?"
"no, be creative, write about whatever you want."
"teacha, what do you want it to be about?"
I told them to just make up anything, and I still got a bunch of well-known African fairytales and stories from the book.
This would be a challenge.
Not only do I have to teach them English and Math and Science, I have to teach them to think.
I said, "guys, this doesn't have to be perfect, I just want you to be able to think for yourselves, so try again and just think of whatever."
"teacha, what do you want us to think of?"
I could have cried.
This goes beyond lack of education.
One thing at a time, Katrinah.
My students are brilliant. But they are bound.
By poverty, yes.
By the repercussions of war, yes.
Often by the loss of one or both parents, yes.
By old, old, spiritual lies, yes.
But there is another great bondage here.
Emotional bondage.
The teachers don't know how to show these kids how to think for themselves, because the teachers are still doing what they were taught by teachers who didn't know how to teach.
It can probably be traced back hundreds of years.
I am no one great.
I don't say that to be self-deprecating.
I say it because it's true.
I can't reverse hundreds of years of enslaved thinking.
I can only take it one by one.
Day by day.
Minute by minute.
I do not know if or what I am teaching my students.
But that is what they are teaching me.

This is Africa.

My brain goes a mile a minute.
I love it here.
I hate it here.
I'm never going home!
I'm getting on a plane and leaving right now!
I want to take every kid home with me.
If another kid touches me with their sticky hands, I am going to kick them.

Seriously, I love it here.
But I miss home. It's so different here in a lot of ways and sometimes I get so frustrated that I can't do more to help.
Some days I feel so exhausted like I poured out everything inside of me.
And some days I wonder what the hell I'm doing here. And it hasn't even been two weeks.

I love my students. I love their eagerness to learn. But I get so frustrated with the society that they live in. I want to change the entire education system in Tanzania. In the entire continent of Africa.
I can't do that.
But I can pour out my heart to each individual child who is placed in my care. One at a time. I can show them love and support and express my faith in them that they actually do have a shot in life. That they won't become the lies they are told. That they won't fall into the poverty and disease that plague their parents. I can do that.
That I can do.

There's a lot to adjust to living in Africa.
I am not a clean freak. But I do like to wash my hands regularly and steer clear of germs if I can help it.
The other day after school, I was walking to the Dalla Dalla stop with at least five little kids running next to me and behind me. A little boy was walking next to me eating a popsicle. With his grubby hands, he broke off a few pieces of his popsicle and handed them to his friends. I though "how sweet of him to share." He then proceeded to lick his hand to clean it and then grab my hand and smile up at me with a big, drooly smile. How could I possibly pull my hand from his in disgust? I smiled back and said "This is Africa."

My students share two erasers between the whole class of about twenty. When they need the eraser they say "teacha! futo!" I ask who has the futo, and every time, someone spits the eraser out of their mouth and hands it to their classmate.
This is Africa.

I can't walk down the street without having the word "Mzungu" (white person) screamed at me, or someone yelling that they want to marry me and come home with me.
This is Africa.

I have 20 weeks and 2 days left.
It already feels so short.
In 142 days, I will be a different person.
I will have new experiences and many stories.
Because you know what?
This is Africa.

Welcome Home

I am in Africa!
It's been 5 days, but it feels like 5 years and 5 minutes all at the same time.
I already have so many stories to share, I don't even know how to organize my thoughts.
I arrived on Friday night, and walked off the plane into the warm African breeze.
I was a little panicky that no one would be there to pick me up and I would be all alone in Africa, but someone was there to greet me when I walked out of customs.
She smiled at me and said, "welcome home."
Welcome home.
It's a weird place to call home. But I love it.
Driving to the house from the airport with the moon shining over a shadowy outline of Mt. Meru, I breathed deeply for the first time in days. I had been freaking out about leaving, but now I was here.
I inhaled the smell of Africa.
It smells like dirt.
But I don't say that in a bad way. Dirt is earth. Dirt is real.
Dirt has become my life.
It is embedded in my fingernails, permanently clung to my feet, and settled in my nose and throat.
I love the nature in Tanzania.
I wake up in the morning and can see Mt. Meru in the distance standing tall and proud.
The sky is bluer and the stars are brighter.
But I work in the city.
An African city is nothing like Philly or New York.
I walk out of our little neighborhood and get on a Dalla Dalla.
A Dalla Dalla is like a fifteen passenger van that functions as a bus mixed with a taxi mixed with a mechanical bull.
It is the craziest mode of transportation I've ever experienced.
You could be sitting in the dalla with an African man half-way on your lap, and a woman sitting next to you holding a basket of chickens.
I get off the dalla at a stop called Kona, which after a few days I realized is corner.
I walk about ten minutes and get on a different dalla to swahilini, where I walk a few blocks to get to my school.
I am greeted by an incredible chorus of  "teacha teacha teacha! Mambo Teacha!" And a hundred little brown hands reach out for a high five.
We walk from the main building to C-2 which is about a block away. I can't walk very quickly for fear of tripping over one of the ten or fifteen kids who are gripping one of my appendages and fighting over who gets to hold my hand.
I love them. I love their bald heads, and their lack of any kind of hygiene and their lack of any kind of personal space, and their lack of knowledge of socially acceptable behavior. And their abundance of love, and their tendency to start singing and dancing out of nowhere, and their patience with me as I try to teach them things I don't even know myself. I love how easily they accepted me. I love that they love me. I love them through and through.
I am exhausted and there are a million things I could write about Africa already, but its all just floating around in my head. I'll try to write a post every few days, so that you can experience this with me.
But for now, know that I am here, and although it is difficult, I am so happy.
Through and through.